Ideas artists shared—and argued about.
Movements are useful lenses, not rigid membership lists.
High Renaissance
Balanced composition, idealized bodies and controlled perspective reached an influential peak in Italy.
→c. 1600–1750Baroque
Theatrical compositions, dramatic light and movement gave painting a new immediacy.
→c. 1780–1850Romanticism
Emotion, imagination and the sublime challenged the cool authority of academic classicism.
→c. 1860–1890Impressionism
Broken color and direct observation transformed ordinary modern subjects into studies of light.
→c. 1880–1910Post-Impressionism
Artists developed distinct answers to what could come after Impressionism: structure, symbolism, color and expression.
→c. 1880–1910Symbolism
Symbolists turned away from literal description toward dreams, myth, psychology and suggestion.
→c. 1907–1914Cubism
Objects were fractured into shifting viewpoints, challenging the single-window perspective inherited from the Renaissance.
→c. 1910 onwardAbstract Art
Color, line, rhythm and form could become the subject rather than a description of the visible world.
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